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The Ballad of St. Barbara 
And Other Verses 


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The Ballad of St. Barbara 
and Other Verses 


By 
Gilbert Keith Chesterton 


G.P. Putnam’s Sons 
New York & London 
Ghe Rnickerbocker Dress 
1923 


Copyright, 1923 
by 
Gilbert Keith Chesterton 





Made in the United States of America 


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= TO F.C. IN MEMORIAM PALESTINE, ’19 


O you remember one immortal 
Lost moment out of time and space, 
What time we thought, who passed the 
portal 
Of that divine disastrous place 
Where Life was slain and Truth was slandered 
On that one holier hill than Rome, 
How far abroad our bodies wandered 
That evening when our souls came home ? 


The mystic city many-gated, 

With monstrous columns, was your own: 
Herodian stones fell down and waited 
Two thousand years to be your throne. 
In the grey rocks the burning blossom 
Glowed terrible as the sacred blood: 

It was no stranger to your bosom 


Than bluebells of an English wood. 


. Do you remember a road that follows 

~ The way of unforgotten feet, 

~ Where from the waste of rocks and hollows 
_ Climb up the crawling crooked street 


52k Si hee ‘< 


The stages of one towering drama 
Always ahead and out of sight . 

Do you remember Aceldama 

And the jackal barking in the night ? 


Life is not void or stuff for scorners: 

We have laughed loud and kept our love, 
We have heard singers in tavern corners 
And not forgotten the birds above: 

We have known smiters and sons of thunder 
And not unworthily walked with them, 

We have grown wiser and lost not wonder; 
And we have seen Jerusalem. 


vi 


INTRODUCTION 
TO THE AMERICAN EDITION 


OxssEcTiIons have been raised against these verses 
but, strangely enough, not upon the simple and 
solid and self-evident ground that they are bad 
verses. So far as I follow the criticism, it is not so 
much a question of bad verse as of bad taste. And 
so far as I understand the test, it is regarded as bad 
taste for anybody to appear to be in any way en- 
joying himself, let alone his compositions. One 
excellent critic on an excellent paper reminded me 
gently that most people in the modern world are 
agnostics, and very sensitive in their feelings; and 
it seems that to use religious language in a loud 
voice in their presence is like disregarding the warn- 
ing hush on the entrance to a sick-room. That the 
modern world is in many ways very like a sick-room 
I should be the last to deny; but I am not sure that 


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CONTENTS 


To F. C. In Memoriam Palestine, ’19 
The Ballad of St. Barbara 
Elegy in a Country Church-yard 
The Sword of Surprise . 

A Wedding in War-time 

The Mystery , 
“The Myth of Arthur” 

The Old Song 

The Trinkets 

The Philanthropist 

On the Downs 

The Red Sea 

For a War Memorial 

Memory : 

The English Graves 
Nightmare . 

A Second Childhood 
**Medievalism”’ 

Poland : 
The Hunting of the Debon : 
Sonnet 

Fantasia 

A Christmas Carol 

To Captain Fryatt 


PAGE 


15 
16 
17 
20 
21 
22 
26 
28 
29 
32 
34 
35 
37 
39 
42 
45 
48 
50 
53 


54 


56° 
58 
Vii 


For Four GuIups: PAGB 


I. The Glass-Stainers . : i , Sree, 
II. The Bridge-Builders  . , ; ‘ iyi 3 | 
Ill. The Stone-Masons : 3 , : eb 3%: 
IV. The Bell-Ringers : ; 4 : Atom 6 «3 
THe CONVERT. : : ; ; : . 69 


Sonas oF EDUCATION: 


I. History ; ‘ p : : : Bia yt &3 
II. Geography é ; : : ‘ ik ahs 
III. For the Créche . ' . : : mite ts, 
IV. Citizenship . ‘ ; : : . 80 

V. The Higher Mathematics. : : en eee 


VI. Hygiene. , : ‘ : _ ream +: 2 


vill 


THE BALLAD OF ST. BARBARA 


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THE BALLAD OF ST. BARBARA 


(St. Barbara is the patron saint of artillery and of 
those in danger of sudden death.) 


HEN the long grey lines came flooding 
¥ \ upon Paris in the plain, 
We stood and drank of the last free air 
we never could taste again: 
They had led us back from the lost battle, to halt 
we knew not where 
And stilled us; and our gaping guns were dumb 
with our despair. 
The grey tribes flowed for ever from the infinite 
lifeless lands 
And a Norman to a Breton spoke, his chin upon 
his hands. 


“There was an end of Ilium; and an end came to 
Rome; 

And a man plays on a painted stage in the land 
that he calls home; 

Arch after arch of triumph, but floor beyond fall- 
ing floor, 

That lead to a low door at last; and beyond there is 
no door.” 


And the Breton to the Norman spoke, like a small 
child spoke he, 

And his sea-blue eyes were empty as his home 
beside the sea: 

*“There are more windows in one house than there 
are eyes to see, 

There are more doors in a man’s house, but God 
has hid the key: 

Ruin is a builder of windows; her legend witnesseth 

Barbara, the saint of gunners, and a stay in sudden 
death.”’ 


It seemed the wheel of the world stood still an 
instant in its turning, 

More than the kings of the earth that turned 
with the turning of Valmy mill: 

While trickled the idle tale and the sea-blue eyes 
were burning, 

Still as the heart of a whirlwind the heart of the 
world stood still. 


“Barbara the beautiful 

Had praise of lute and pen: 

Her hair was like a summer night 
Dark and desired of men. 


Her feet like birds from far away 
That linger and light in doubt; 

And her face was like a window 
Where a man’s first love looked out. 


Her sire was master of many slaves 
A hard man of his hands; 

They built a tower about her 

In the desolate golden lands, 


Sealed as the tyrants sealed their tombs, 
Planned with an ancient plan, 

And set two windows in the tower 

Like the two eyes of a man.” 


Our guns were set toward the foe; we had no word, 
for firing. 

Grey in the gateway of St. Gond the Guard of the 
tyrant shone; 

Dark with the fate of a falling star, retiring and 
retiring, 

The Breton line went backward and the Breton tale 
went on. 


**Her father had sailed across the sea 
From the harbour of Africa 

When all the slaves took up their tools 
For the bidding of Barbara. 


She smote the bare wall with her hand 
And bad them smite again; 

She poured them wealth of wine and meat 
To stay them in their pain. 


And cried through the lifted thunder 
Of thronging hammer and hod 
‘Throw open the third window 

In the third name of God.’ 


Then the hearts failed and the tools fell, 
And far towards the foam, 

Men saw a shadow on the sands 

And her father coming home.” 


Speak low and low, along the line the whispered 
word is flying 

Before the touch, before the time, we may not 
loose a breath: 


Their guns must mash us to the mire and there be 
no replying, 

Till the hand is raised to fling us for the final dice 
to death. 


‘There were two windows in your tower, 
Barbara, Barbara, 

For all between the sun and moon 

In the lands of Africa. 


Hath a man three eyes, Barbara, 
A bird three wings, 

That you have riven roof and wall 
To look upon vain things?” 


Her voice was like a wandering thing 
That falters yet is free, 

Whose soul has drunk in a distant land 
Of the rivers of liberty. 


“There are more wings than the wind knows 
Or eyes than see the sun 

In the light of the lost window 

And the wind of the doors undone. 


For out of the first lattice 
Are the red lands that break 
And out of the second lattice 
Sea like a green snake, 


But out of the third lattice 
Under low eaves like wings 

Is a new corner of the sky 
And the other side of things.” 


It opened in the inmost place an instant beyond 
uttering, 

A casement and a chasm and a thunder of doors 
undone, 

A seraph’s strong wing shaken out the shock of its 
unshuttering, 

That split the shattered manlipit from a light 
behind the sun. 


“Then he drew sword and drave her 
Where the judges sat and said 
“Caesar sits above the gods, 
Barbara the maid. 


Caesar hath made a treaty 

With the moon and with the sun, 
All the gods that men ean praise 
Praise him every one. 


There is peace with the anointed 

Of the scarlet oils of Bel, 

With the Fish God, where the whirlpool 
Is a winding stair to hell, 


With the pathless pyramids of slime, 
Where the mitred negro lifts 

To his black cherub in the cloud 
Abominable gifts, 


With the leprous silver cities 

Where the dumb priests dance and nod, 
But not with the three windows 

And the last name of God.’”’ 


They are firing, we are falling, and the red skies 
rend and shiver us, 
Barbara, Barbara, we may not loose a breath— 


Be at the bursting doors of doom, and in the dark 
deliver us, 

Who loosen the last window on the sun of sudden 
death. 


“‘ Barbara the beautiful 

Stood up as queen set free, 

Whose mouth is set to a terrible cup 
And the trumpet of liberty. 


‘IT have looked forth from a window 
That no man now shall bar, 
Caesar’s toppling battle-towers 
Shall never stretch so far. 


The slaves are dancing in their chains, 
The child laughs at the rod, 
Because of the bird of the three wings, 
And the third face of God.’ 


The sword upon his shoulder 
Shifted and shone and fell, 

~ And Barbara lay very small 
And crumpled like a shell.” 


10 


What wall upon what hinges turned stands open 
like a door? 

Too simple for the sight of faith, too huge for 
human eyes, 

What light upon what ancient way shines to a 
far-off floor, 

The line of the lost land of France or the plains of 
Paradise? 


‘Caesar smiled above the gods, 
His lip of stone was curled, 

His iron armies wound like chains 
Round and round the world, 


And the strong slayer of his own 

That cut down flesh for grass, 

Smiled too, and went to his own tower 
Like a walking tower of brass, 


And the songs ceased and the slaves were 
dumb; 

And far towards the foam 

Men saw a shadow on the sands; 

And her father coming home. . 


11 


Blood of his blood upon the sword 
Stood red but never dry. 

He wiped it slowly, till the blade 
Was blue as the blue sky. 


But the blue sky split with a thunder-crack, 
Spat down a blinding brand, 

And all of him lay back and flat 

As his shadow on the sand.” 


The touch and the tornado; all our guns give 
tongue together 

St. Barbara for the gunnery and God defend the 
right, 

They are stopped and gapped and battered as we 
blast away the weather. 

Building window upon window to our lady of the 
light. 

For the light is come on Liberty, her foes are fall- 
ing, falling, 

They are reeling, they are running, as the shameful 
years have run, 

She is risen for all the humble, she has heard the 
conquered calling, | 


12 


St. Barbara of the Gunners, with her hand upon 
the gun. 

They are burst asunder in the midst that eat of 
their own flatteries, 

Whose lip is curled to order as its barbered hair is 
curled... . 

Blast of the beauty of sudden death, St. Barbara of 
the batteries! 

That blow the new white window in the wall of ali 
the world. 


For the hand is raised behind us, and the bolt 
smites hard 

Through the rending of the doorways, through the 
death-gap of the Guard, 

For the cry of the Three Colours is in Condé and 
beyond 

And the Guard is flung for carrion in the graveyard 
of St. Gond, 

Through Mondemont and out of it, through Morin 
marsh and on 

With earthquake of salutation the impossible thing 
is gone, 

Gaul, charioted and charging, great Gaul upon a 
gun, 


13° 


Tip-toe on all her thousand years and trumpeting 
to the sun: 

As day returns, as death returns, swung Rea aM 
and swung home, 

Back on the barbarous reign returns the cere: 
ram of Rome. 

While that that the east held hard and hot like 
pincers in a forge, 

Came like the west wind roaring up the cannon of 
St. George, 

Where the hunt is up and racing over stream and 
swamp and tarn 

And their batteries, black with battle, hold the 
bridgeheads of the Marne 

And across the carnage of the Guard, by Paris in 
the plain, 

The Normans to the Bretons cried and the Bretons 
cheered again. . . . 

But he that told the tale went home to his house 
beside the sea 

And burned before St. Barbara, the light of the 
windows three, 

Three candles for an unknown thing, never to come 
again, 

That opened like the eye of God on Paris in the plain. 


14 


ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD 


P AHE men that worked for England 
They have their graves at home: 
And bees and birds of England 
About the cross can roam. 


But they that fought for England, 
Following a falling star, 

Alas, alas for England 

They have their graves afar. 


And they that rule in England, 
In stately conclave met, 

Alas, alas for England 

They have no graves as yet. 


15 


THE SWORD OF SURPRISE 


UNDER me from my bones, O sword of God, 

S Till they stand stark and strange as do the 
trees; 

That I whose heart goes up with the soaring woods 

May marvel as much at these. 


Sunder me from my blood that in the dark 

I hear that red ancestral river run, 

Like branching buried floods that find the sea 
But never see the sun. 


Give me miraculous eyes to see my eyes, 
Those rolling mirrors made alive in me, 
Terrible crystal more incredible 

Than all the things they see. 


Sunder me from my soul, that I may see 

The sins like streaming wounds, the life’s brave 
beat; 

Till I shall save myself, as I would save 

A stranger in the street. 


16 


A WEDDING IN WAR-TIME 
()« God who made two lovers in a garden, 


And smote them separate and set them free, 
Their four eyes wild for wonder and wrath 
and pardon 
And their kiss thunder as lips of land and sea: 
Each rapt unendingly beyond the other, 
Two starry worlds of unknown gods at war, 
Wife and not mate, a man and not a brother, 
We thank thee thou hast made us what we are. 


Make not the grey slime of infinity 

To swamp these flowers thou madest one by one; 

Let not the night that was thine enemy 

Mix a mad twilight of the moon and sun; 

Waken again to thunderclap and clamour 

The wonder of our sundering and the song, 

Or break our hearts with thine hell-shattering 
hammer 

But leave a shade between us all day long. 


Shade of high shame and honourable blindness 
When youth, in storm of dizzy and distant things, 
Finds the wild windfall of a little kindness 

And shakes to think that all the world has wings. 


17 


When the one head that turns the heavens in turning 
Moves yet as lightly as a lingering bird, 

And red and random, blown astray but burning, 
Like a lost spark goes by the glorious word. 


Make not this sex, this other side of things, 
A thing less distant than the world’s desire; 
What colour to the end of evening clings 
And what far cry of frontiers and what fire 
Fallen too far beyond the sun for seeking, 
Let it divide us though our kingdom come; 
With a far signal in our secret speaking 

To hang the proud horizon in our home. 


Once we were one, a shapeless cloud that lingers 
Loading the seas and shutting out the skies, 

One with the woods, a monster of myriad fingers, 
You laid on me no finger of surprise. 

One with the stars, a god with myriad eyes, 

I saw you nowhere and was blind for scorn: 

One till the world was riven and the rise 

Of the white days when you and I were born. 


Darkens the world: the world-old fetters rattle; 
And these that have no hope behind the sun 


18 


May feed like bondmen and may breed like cattle, 
One in the darkness as the dead are one; 

Us if the rended grave give up its glory 

Trumpets shall summon asunder and face to face: 
We will be strangers in so strange a story 

And wonder, meeting in so wild a place. 


Ah, not in vain or utterly for loss 

Come even the black flag and the battle-hordes, 

If these grey devils flee the sign of the cross 

Even in the symbol of the crossing swords. 

Nor shall death doubt Who made our souls alive 

Swords meeting and not stakes set side by side, 

Bade us in the sunburst and the thunder thrive 

Earthquake and Dawn; the bridegroom and the 
bride. 


Death and not dreams or doubt of things undying, 
Of whose the holy hearth or whose the sword; 
Though sacred spirits dissever in strong crying 
Into Thy hands, but Thy two hands, O Lord, 
Though not in Earth as once in Eden standing 

So plain again we see Thee what thou art, 

As in this blaze, the blasting and the branding 

Of this wild wedding where we meet and part. 


19 


THE MYSTERY 
ie sunset clouds could grow on trees 


It would but match the may in flower; 
And skies be underneath the seas 
No topsyturvier than a shower. 


If mountains rose on wings to wander 
They were no wilder than a cloud; 

Yet all my praise is mean as slander, 
Mean as these mean words spoken aloud. 


And never more than now I know > 
That man’s first heaven is far behind; 
Unless the blazing seraph’s blow 

Has left him in the garden blind. 


Witness, O Sun that blinds our eyes, 
Unthinkable and unthankable King, 
That though all other wonder dies 

I wonder at not wondering. 


“THE MYTH OF ARTHUR” 
() LEARNED man who never learned to 


learn, 

Save to deduce, by timid steps and small, 
From towering smoke that fire can never burn 
And from tall tales that men were never tall. 
Say, have you thought what manner of man it is _ 
Of whom men say “‘He could strike giants down’”’? 
Or what strong memories over time’s abyss 
Bore up the pomp of Camelot and the crown. 
And why one banner all the background fills, 
Beyond the pageants of so many spears, 
And by what witchery in the western hills 
A throne stands empty for a thousand years. 
Who hold, unheeding this immense impact, 
Immortal story for a mortal sin; 
Lest human fable touch historic fact, 
Chase myths like moths, and fight them with a pin. 
Take comfort; rest—there needs not this ado. 
You shall not be a myth, I promise you. 


21 


THE OLD SONG 


(On the Embankment in stormy weather.) 


LIVID sky on London 
mN And like iron steeds that rear 
A shock of engines halted, 

And I knew the end was near: 

And something said that far away, over the hills 
and far away, 

There came a crawling thunder and the end of all 
things here. 

_ For London Bridge is broken down, broken down, 
broken down, 

As digging lets the daylight on the sunken streets 
of yore, 

The lightning looked on London town, the broken 
bridge of London town, 

The ending of a broken road where men shall go 
no more. 


I saw the kings of London town, 
The kings that buy and sell, 

That built it up with penny loaves 
And penny lies as well: 


22 


And where the streets were paved with gold, the 
shrivelled paper shone for gold, 

The scorching light of promises that pave the 
streets of hell. 

For penny loaves will melt away, melt away, melt 
away, 

Mock the mean that haggled in the grain they did 
not grow; 

With hungry faces in the gate, a hundred thousand 
in the gate, 

A thunder-flash on London and the finding of the 
foe. 


I heard the hundred pin-makers 

Slow down their racking din, 

Till in the stillness men could hear 

The dropping of the pin: 

And somewhere men without the wall, beneath the 
wood, without the wall, 

Had found the place where London ends and 
England can begin. 

For pins and needles bend and break, bend and 
break, bend and break, 

Faster than the breaking spears or the bending of 
the bow 


23 


Of pageants pale in thunder-light, ’twixt thunder- 
load and thunder-light, 

The Hundreds marching on the hills in the wars of 
long ago. 


I saw great Cobbett riding, 

The horseman of the shires; 

And his face was red with judgment 

And a light of Luddite fires: 

And south to Sussex and the sea the lights leapt up 
for liberty, 

The trumpet of the yeomanry, the hammer of the 
squires; 

For bars of iron rust away, rust away, rust away, 

Rend before the hammer and the horseman riding 
in, 

Crying that all men at the last, and at the worst 
and at the last, 

Have found the place where England ends and 
England can begin. 


His horse-hoofs go before you, 

Far beyond your bursting tyres; 
And time is bridged behind him 
And our sons are with our sires. 


24 


A trailing meteor on the Downs he rides above the 
rotting towns, 
The Horseman of Apocalypse, the Rider of the 
Shires. 
For London Bridge is broken down, broken down, 
~ broken down; 
Blow the horn of Huntingdon from Scotland to the 
sea— 
. . Only a flash of thunder-light, a flying dream 
of thunder-light, 
Had shown under the shattered sky a people that 
were free. 


25 


26 


THE TRINKETS 
WANDERING world of rivers, 


A wavering world of trees, 


If the world grow dim and dizzy 


With all changes and degrees, 
It is but Our Lady’s mirror 
Hung dreaming in its place, 
Shining with only shadows 
Till she wakes it with her face. 


The standing whirlpool of the stars, 
The wheel of all the world, 

Is a ring on Our Lady’s finger 

With the suns and moons empearled 
With stars for stones to please her 
Who sits playing with her rings 

With the great heart that a woman has 
And the love of little things. 


Wings of the whirlwind of the world 
From here to Ispahan, 

Spurning the flying forests 

Are light as Our Lady’s fan: 


For all things violent here and vain 
Lie open and all at ease 

Where God has girded heaven to guard 
Her holy vanities. 


Q7 


THE PHILANTHROPIST 
(With apologies to a beautiful poem.) 
: BOU BEN ADHEM (may his tribe decrease 


By cautious birth-control and die in peace) 
Mellow with learning lightly took the word 
That marked him not with them that love the Lord, 
And told the angel of the book and pen 
** Write me as one that loves his fellow-men: 
For them alone I labour; to reclaim 
The ragged roaming Bedouin and to tame 
To ordered service; to uproot their vine 
Who mock the Prophet, being mad with wine, 
Let daylight through their tents and through their 
lives, 
Number their camels, even count their wives, 
Plot out the desert into streets and squares; 
And count it a more fruitful work than theirs 
Who lift a vain and visionary love 
To your vague Allah in the skies above.”’ 


Gently replied the angel of the pen: 

‘‘Labour in peace and love your fellow-men: 
And love not God, since men alone are dear, 
Only fear God; for you have cause to fear.” 


28 


ON THE DOWNS 


HEN you came over the top of the world 
WV In the great day on the Downs, 
The air was crisp and the clouds were 
curled, 
When you came over the top of the world, 


And under your feet were spire and street 
And seven English towns. 





And I could not think that the pride was perished 
As you came over the down; 

Liberty, chivalry, all we cherished, 

Lost in a rattle of pelf and perished; 

Or the land we love that you walked above 
Withering town by town. 


For you came out on the dome of the earth 
Like a vision of victory, 

Out on the great green dome of the earth 
As the great blue dome of the sky for girth, 
And under your feet the shires could meet 
And your eyes went out to sea. 


Under your feet the towns were seven, 
Alive and alone on high, 


29 


Your back to the broad white wall of heaven; 
You were one and the towns were seven, 
Single and one as the soaring sun 

And your head upheld the sky. 


And I thought of a thundering flag unfurled 
And the roar of the burghers’ bell: 

Beacons crackled and bolts were hurled 

As you came over the top of the world; 
And under your feet were chance and cheat 
And the slime of the slopes of hell. 


It has not been as the great wind spoke 

On the great green down that day: 

We have seen, wherever the wide wind spoke, 
Slavery slaying the English folk: 

The robbers of land we have seen command 
The rulers of land obey. 


We have seen the gigantic golden worms 

In the garden of paradise: 

We have seen the great and the wise make terms 
With the peace of snakes and the pride of worms, 
And them that plant make covenant 

With the locust and the lice. 


30 


And the wind blows and the world goes on 

And the world can say that we, 

Who stood on the cliffs where the quarries shone, 
Stood upon clouds that the sun shone on: 

And the clouds dissunder and drown in thunder 
The news that will never be. 


Lady of all that have loved the people, 
Light over roads astray, 

Maze of steading and street and steeple, 
Great as a heart that has loved the people: 
Stand on the crown of the soaring down, 
Lift up your arms and pray. 


Only you I have not forgotten 

For wreck of the world’s renown, 

Rending and ending of things gone rotten, 
Only the face of you unforgotten: 

And your head upthrown in the skies alone 
As you came over the down. 


ol 


THE RED SEA 


UR souls shall be Leviathans 
() In purple seas of wine 
When drunkenness is dead with death, 
And drink is all divine; 
Learning in those immortal vats 
What mortal vineyards mean; 
For only in heaven we shall know 


How happy we have been. 


Like clouds that wallow in the wind 
Be free to drift and drink; 

Tower without insolence when we rise, 
Without surrender sink: 

Dreams dizzy and crazy we shall know 
And have no need to write 

Our blameless blasphemies of praise, 
Our nightmares of delight. 


For so in such misshapen shape 

The vision came to me, 

Where such titanian dolphins dark 

Roll in a sunset sea: 

Dark with dense colours, strange and strong 


32 


As terrible true love, 
Haloed like fish in phospher light 
The holy monsters move. 


Measure is here and law, to learn, 
When honour rules it so, 

To lift the glass and lay it down 

Or break the glass and go. 

But when the world’s New Deluge boils 
From the New Noah’s vine, 

Our souls shall be Leviathans 

In sanguine seas of wine. 


33 


34 


FOR A WAR MEMORIAL 


(Suggested Inscription probably not selected 
by the Committee.) 


, NHE hucksters haggle in the mart 
The cars and carts go by; 
Senates and schools go droning on; 
For dead things cannot die. 


A storm stooped on the place of tombs 
With bolts to blast and rive; 

But these be names of many men 

The lightning found alive. 


If usurers rule and rights decay 
And visions view once more 
Great Carthage like a golden shell 
Gape hollow on the shore, 


Still to the last of crumbling time 
Upon this stone be read 

How many men of England died 
To prove they were not dead. 


MEMORY 


F I ever go back to Baltimore, 
| The city of Maryland, 

I shall miss again as I missed before 
A thousand things of the world in store, 
The story standing in every door 
That beckons with every hand. 


I shall not know where the bonds were riven 
And a hundred faiths set free, 

Where a wandering cavalier had given 

Her hundredth name to the Queen of Heaven, 
And made oblation of feuds forgiven 

To Our Lady of Liberty. 


I shall not travel the tracks of fame 

Where the war was not to the strong; 

When Lee the last of the heroes came 

With the Men of the South and a flag like flame, 
And called the land by its lovely name 

In the unforgotten song. 


If ever I cross the sea and stray 
To the city of Maryland, 


35. 


I will sit on a stone and watch or pray 

For a stranger’s child that was there one day: 
And the child will never come back to play, 
And no one will understand. 


36 


THE ENGLISH GRAVES 


\ ), YERE I that wandering citizen whose city 
is the world, 
I would not weep for all that fell before 
the flags were furled; 
I would not let one murmur mar the trumpets 
volleying forth 
How God grew weary of the kings, and the cold 
hell in the north. 
But we whose hearts are homing birds have heavier 
thoughts of home, 
Though the great eagles burn with gold on Paris or 
on Rome, 
Who stand beside our dead and stare, like seers at 
an eclipse, 
At the riddle of the island tale and the twilight of 
the ships. 


For these were simple men that loved with hands 
and feet and eyes, 

Whose souls were humbled to the hills and 
narrowed to the skies, 

The hundred little lands within one little land that 
lie, 


Where Severn seeks the sunset isles or Sussex 
scales the sky. 


And what is theirs, though banners blow on 
Warsaw risen again, 

Or ancient laughter walks in gold through the 
vineyards of Lorraine, 

Their dead are marked on English stones, their 
loves on English trees, 

How little is the prize they win, how mean a coin 
for these— 

How small a shrivelled laurel-leaf lies crumpled 
here and curled: 

They died to save their country and they only 
saved the world. 


38 


“ 
3 yo 


| 
NIGHTMARE 


HE silver and violet leopard of the night 
Spotted with stars and smooth with 


silence sprang; 
And though three doors stood open, the end of light 
Closed like a trap; and stillness was a clang. 


Under the leopard sky of lurid stars 

I strove with evil sleep the hot night long, 

Dreams dumb and swollen of triumphs without 
wars, 

Oh tongueless trumpet and unanswering gong. 


I saw a pale imperial pomp go by, 

Helmet and hornéd mitre and heavy wreath; 
Their high strange ensigns hung upon the sky 
And their great shields were like the doors of death. 


Their mitres were as moving pyramids 

And all their crowns as marching towers were tall; 
Their eyes were cold under their carven lids 

And the same carven smile was on them all. 


39 


Over a paven plain that seemed unending 
They passed unfaltering till it found an end 
In one long shallow step; and these descending 
Fared forth anew as long away to wend. 


I thought they travelled for a thousand years; 
And at the end was nothing for them all, 

For all that splendour of sceptres and of spears, 
But a new step, another easy fall. 


The smile of stone seemed but a little less, 
The load of silver but a little more: 

And ever was that terraced wilderness 
And falling plain paved like a palace floor. 


Rust red as gore crawled on their arms of might 
And on their faces wrinkles and not scars: 

Till the dream suddenly ended; noise and light 
Loosened the tyranny of the tropic stars. 


But over them like a subterranean sun 

I saw the sign of all the fiends that fell; 

And a wild voice cried “‘Hasten and be done, 
Is there no steepness in the stairs of hell?” 


40 


He that returns, He that remains the same, 
Turned the round real world, His iron vice; 
Down the grey garden paths a bird called twice, 
And through three doors mysterious daylight came. 


Al 


A2 


A SECOND CHILDHOOD 


\ N 7HEN all my days are ending 
And I have no song to sing, 
I think I shall not be too old 
To stare at everything; 


As I stared once at a nursery door 
Or a tall tree and a swing. 


Wherein God’s ponderous mercy hangs 
On all my sins and me, 

Because He does not take away 

The terror from the tree 

And stones still shine along the road 
That are and cannot be. 


Men grow too old for love, my love, 
Men grow too old for wine, 

But I shall not grow too old to see 
Unearthly daylight shine, 

Changing my chamber’s dust to snow 
Till I doubt if it be mine. 


Behold, the crowning mercies melt, 
The first surprises stay; 


And in my dross is dropped a gift 

For which I dare not pray: 

That a man grow used to grief and joy 
But not to night and day. 


Men grow too old for love, my love, 
Men grow too old for lies; 

But I shall not grow too old to see 
Enormous night arise, 

A cloud that is larger than the world 
And a monster made of eyes. 


Nor am I worthy to unloose 

The latchet of my shoe; 

Or shake the dust from off my feet 
Or the staff that bears me through 
‘On ground that is too good to last, 
Too solid to be true. 


Men grow too old to woo, my love, 
Men grow too old to wed: 

But I shall not grow too old to see 
Hung crazily overhead 

Incredible rafters when I wake 


And find I am not dead. 


A thrill of thunder in my hair: | 
Though blackening clouds be plain, 
Still I am stung and startled 

By the first drop of the rain: 
Romance and pride and passion pass 
And these are what remain. 


Strange crawling carpets of the grass, 
Wide windows of the sky: 

So in this perilous grace of God 

With all my sins go I: 

And things grow new though I grow old, 
Though I grow old and die. 


“MEDILZAVALISM” 


F men should rise and return to the noise and 
| time of the tourney, 
The name and fame of the tabard, the tangle 
of gules and gold, 
Would these things stand and suffice for the bourne 
of a backward journey, 
A light on our days returning, as it was in the days 


of old? 


Nay, there is none rides back to pick up a glove or a 
feather, 

Though the gauntlet rang with honour or the plume 
was more than a crown: 

And hushed is the holy trumpet that called the 
nations together 

And under the Horns of Hattin the hope of the 
world went down. 


Ah, not in remembrance stored, but out of oblivion 
starting, 

Because you have sought new homes and all that 
you sought is so, 


45 


Because you had trodden the fire and barred the 
door in departing, 
Returns in your chosen exile the glory of long ago. 


Not then when you barred the door, not then when 
you trod the embers, 

But now, at your new road’s end, you have seen the 
face of a fate, 

That not as a child looks back, and not as a fool 
remembers, 

All that men took too lightly and all that they love 
too late. 


It is you that have made no rubric for saints, no 
raiment for lovers, 

Your caps that cry for a feather, your roofs that 
sigh for a spire: 

Is it a dream from the dead if your own decay 
discovers 

Alive in your rotting graveyard the worm of the 
world’s desire? 


Therefore the old trees tower, that the green trees 
grow and are stunted: 


46 


Therefore these dead men mock you, that you the 
living are dead: 

Since ever you battered the saints and the tools of 
your crafts were blunted, 

Or shattered the glass in its glory and loaded your- 
selves with the lead. 


When the usurer hunts the squire as the squire has 
hunted the peasant, 

As sheep that are eaten of worms where men were 
eaten of sheep: 

Now is the judgment of earth, and the weighing of 
past and present, 

Who scorn to weep over ruins, behold your ruin 
and weep. 


Have ye not known, ye fools, that have made the 
present a prison, 

That thirst can remember water and hunger 
remember bread? 

We went not gathering ghosts; but the shriek of 
your shame is arisen 

Out of your own black Babel too loud; and it woke 
the dead. 


47 


POLAND 


UGURS that watched archaic birds 
A Such pluméd prodigies might read, 
The eagles that were double-faced, 
The eagle that was black indeed; 
And when the battle-birds went down 
And in their track the vultures come, 


We know what pardon and what peace 
Will keep our little masters dumb. 


The men that sell what others make, 

As vultures eat what others slay, 

Will prove in matching plume with plume 
That naught is black and all is grey; 

Grey as those dingy doves that once, 

By money-changers palmed and priced, 
Amid the crash of tables flapped 

And huddled from the wrath of Christ. 


But raised for ever for a sign 

Since God made anger glorious, 
Where eagles black and vultures grey 
Flocked back about the heroic house, 


Where war is holier than peace, 
Where hate is holier than love, 
Shone terrible as the Holy Ghost 
An eagle whiter than a dove. 


THE HUNTING OF THE DRAGON 


\ , 7 HEN we went hunting the Dragon 
In the days when we were young, 
We tossed the bright world over our 
shoulder 
As bugle and baldrick slung; 
Never was world so wild and fair 
As what went by on the wind, 
Never such fields of paradise 
As the fields we left behind: 
For this is the best of a rest for men 
That men should rise and ride 
Making a flying fairyland 
Of market and country-side, 
Wings on the cottage, wings on the wood, 
Wings upon pot and pan, 
For the hunting of the Dragon 
That is the life of a man. 


For men grow weary of fairyland 

When the Dragon is a dream, 

And tire of the talking bird in the tree, 

The singing fish in the stream; 

And the wandering stars grow stale, grow stale, 


50 


And the wonder is stiff with scorn; 
For this is the honour of fairyland 
And the following of the horn; 


Beauty on beauty called us back 

When we could rise and ride, 

And a woman looked out of every window 
As wonderful as a bride: 

And the tavern-sign as a tabard blazed, 
And the children cheered and ran, 

For the love of the hate of the Dragon 
That is the pride of a man. 


The sages called him a shadow 

And the light went out of the sun: 

And the wise men told us that all was well 
And all was weary and one: 

And then, and then, in the quiet garden, 
With never a weed to kill, 

We knew that his shining tail had shone 
In the white road over the hill: 

We knew that the clouds were flakes of flame, 
We knew that the sunset fire 

Was red with the blood of the Dragon 
Whose death is the world’s desire. 


51 


For the horn was blown in the heart of the night 
That men should rise and ride, 

Keeping the tryst of a terrible jest 

Never for long untried; 

Drinking a dreadful blood for wine, 

Never in cup or can, 

The death of a deathless Dragon, 

That is the life of a man. 


52 


SONNET 


IGH on the wall that holds Jerusalem 

H I saw one stand under the stars like 
stone. 

And when I perish it shall not be known 

Whether he lived, some strolling son of Shem, 

Or was some great ghost wearing the diadem 

Of Solomon or Saladin on a throne: 

I only know, the features being unshown, 

I did not dare draw near and look on them. 


Did ye not guess . . . the diadem might be 
Plaited in stranger style by hands of hate . . . 
But when I looked, the wall was desolate 

And the grey starlight powdered tower and tree: 
And vast and vague beyond the Golden Gate 
Heaved Moab of the mountains like a sea. 


53 


FANTASIA 


4 AHE happy men that lose their heads 
They find their heads in heaven, 
As cherub heads with cherub wings, 

And cherub haloes even: 

Out of the infinite evening lands 

Along the sunset sea, 

Leaving the purple fields behind, 

The cherub wings beat down the wind 

Back to the groping body and blind 

As the bird back to the tree. 


Whether the plumes be passion-red 
For him that truly dies 

By headsmen’s blade or battle-axe, 
Or blue like butterflies, 

For him that lost it in a lane 

In April’s fits and starts, 

His folly is forgiven then: 

But higher, and far beyond our ken, 
Is the healing of the unhappy men, 
The men that lost their hearts. 


Is there not pardon for the brave 
And broad release above, 


5A 


Who lost their heads for liberty 

Or lost their hearts for love? 

Or is the wise man wise indeed 
Whom larger thoughts keep whole? 
Who sees life equal like a chart, 
Made strong to play the saner part, 
And keep his head and keep his heart, 
And only lose his soul. 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


(The Chief Constable has issued a statement de- 
claring that carol singing in the streets by children is 
allegal, and morally and physically injurious. He 
appeals to the public to discourage the practice.— 


Daily Paper.) 


56 


OD rest you merry gentlemen, 
Let nothing you dismay; 


The Herald Angels cannot sing, 


The cops arrest them on the wing, 
And warn them of the docketing 
Of anything they say. 


God rest you merry gentlemen, 
May nothing you dismay: 

On your reposeful cities lie 
Deep silence, broken only by 
The motor horn’s melodious cry, 
The hooter’s happy bray. 


So, when the song of children ceased 
And Herod was obeyed, 


In his high hall Corinthian 

With purple and with peacock fan, 
Rested that merry gentleman; 
And nothing him dismayed. 


57 


TO CAPTAIN FRYATT 
AMPLED yet red is the last of the 
embers, 
Red the last cloud of a sun that has set; 
What of your sleeping though Flanders remembers, 
What of your waking, if England forget? 


Why should you share in the hearts that we harden, 
In the shame of our nature, who see it and live? 
How more than the godly the greedy can pardon, 
How well and how quickly the hungry forgive. 


Ah, well if the soil of the stranger had wrapped you, 

While the lords that you served and the friends 
that you knew 

Hawk in the marts of the tyrants that trapped you, 

Tout in the shops of the butchers that slew. 


Why should you wake for a realm that is rotten, 
Stuffed with their bribes and as dead to their debts? 
Sleep and forget us, as we have forgotten; 

For Flanders remembers and England forgets. 


58 


FOR FOUR GUILDS: 


I. Tue Guass-STAINERS 


V XO every Man his Mystery, 

A trade and only one: 

The masons make the hives of men, 
The domes of grey or dun, 


But we have wrought in rose and gold 
The houses of the sun. 


The shipwrights build the houses high, 
Whose green foundations sway 

Alive with fish like little flames, 

When the wind goes out to slay. 

But we abide with painted sails 

The cyclone of the day. 


The weavers make the clothes of men 
And coats for everyone; 

They walk the streets like sunset clouds; 
But we have woven and spun 

In scarlet or in golden-green 

The gay coats of the sun. 


59 


60 


You whom the usurers and the lords 
With insolent liveries trod, 
Deep in dark church behold, above 


Their lance-lengths by a rod, 
Where we have blazed the tabard 


Of the trumpeter of God. 


FOR FOUR GUILDS: 


II. THe Brince-BuiLpEers 


N the world’s whitest morning 
| As hoary with hope, 
The Builder of Bridges 
Was priest and was pope: 
And the mitre of mystery 
And the canopy his, 
Who darkened the chasms 
And domed the abyss. 


To eastward and westward 
Spread wings at his word 
The arch with the key-stone 
That stoops like a bird; 
That rides the wild air 

And the daylight cast under; 
The highway of danger, 

The gateway of wonder. 


Of his throne were the thunders 
That rivet and fix 

Wild weddings of strangers 
That meet and not mix; 


62 


The town and the cornland; 
The bride and the groom: 
In the breaking of bridges 
Is treason and doom. 


But he bade us, who fashion 
The road that can fly, 

That we build not too heavy 
And build not too high: 

Seeing alway that under 

The dark arch’s bend 

Shine death and white daylight 
Unchanged to the end. 


Who walk on his mercy 

Walk light, as he saith, 
Seeing that our life 

Is a bridge above death; 

And the world and its gardens 
And hills, as ye heard, 

Are born above space 

On the wings of a bird. 


Not high and not heavy 
Is building of his: 


When ye seal up the flood 

And forget the abyss, 

When your towers are uplifted, 
Your banners unfurled, 
In the breaking of bridges 

Is the end of the world. 


63 


FOR FOUR GUILDS: 


Ill. Tur Stone-Masons 


E have graven the mountain of God with 
, \ hands, 
As our hands were graven of God, they 
say, 

Where the seraphs burn in the sun like brands 
And the devils carry the rains away; 
Making a thrift of the throats of hell, 
Our gargoyles gather the roaring rain, 


Whose yawn is more than a frozen yell 
And their very vomiting not in vain. 


Wilder than all that a tongue can utter, 

Wiser than all that is told in words, 

The wings of stone of the soaring gutter 

Fly out and follow the flight of the birds; 

The rush and rout of the angel wars 

Stand out above the astounded street, 

Where we flung our gutters against the stars 
For a sign that the first and the last shall meet. 


We have graven the forest of heaven with hands, 
Being great with a mirth too gross for pride, 


64 


In the stone that battered him Stephen stands 
And Peter himself is petrified: 

Such hands as have grubbed in the glebe for bread 
Have bidden the blank rock blossom and thrive, 
Such hands as have stricken a live man dead 
Have struck, and stricken the dead alive. 


Fold your hands before heaven in praying, 
Lift up your hands into heaven and cry; 

But look where our dizziest spires are saying 
What the hands of a man did up in the sky: 
Drenched before you have heard the thunder, 
White before you have felt the snow; 

For the giants lift up their hands to wonder 
How high the hands of a man could go. 


FOR FOUR GUILDS: 


IV. Tue Bewzi-RIncers 


HE angels are singing like birds in a tree 
In the organ of good St. Cecily: 


And the parson reads with his hand upon 
The graven eagle of great St. John: 
But never the fluted pipes shall go 
Like the fifes of an army all a-row, 
Merrily marching down the street 
To the marts where the busy and idle meet; 
And never the brazen bird shall fly 
Out of the window and into the sky, 
Till men in cities and shires and ships 
Look up at the living Apocalypse. 


But all can hark at the dark of even 

The bells that bay like the hounds of heaven, 
Tolling and telling that over and under, 

In the ways of the air like a wandering thunder, 
The hunt is up over hills untrod: 

For the wind is the way of the dogs of God: 
From the tyrant’s tower to the outlaw’s den 
Hunting the souls of the sons of men. 

Ruler and robber and pedlar and peer, 


66 


Who will not harken and yet will hear; 
Filling men’s heads with the hurry and hum 
Making them welcome before they come. 


And we poor men stand under the steeple 
Drawing the cords that can draw the people, 
And in our leash like the leaping dogs 

Are God’s most deafening demagogues: 

And we are but little, like dwarfs underground, 
While hang up in heaven the houses of sound, 
Moving like mountains that faith sets free, 
Yawning like caverns that roar with the sea, 
As awlully loaded, as airly buoyed, 

Armoured archangels that trample the void: 
Wild as with dancing and weighty with dooms, 
Heavy as their panoply, light as their plumes. 


Neither preacher nor priest are we: 

Each man mount to his own degree: 

Only remember that just such a cord 

Tosses in heaven the trumpet and sword; 

Souls on their terraces, saints on their towers, 
Rise up in arms at alarum like ours: 

Glow like great watchfires that redden the skies 
Titans whose wings are a glory of eyes, 


Crowned constellations by twelves and by sevens, 
Domed dominations more old than the heavens, 
Virtues that thunder and thrones that endure 
Sway like a bell to the prayers of the poor. 


68 


THE CONVERT 
\ FTER one moment when I bowed my head 


And the whole world turned over and 
came upright, 

And I came out where the old road shone white, 
I walked the ways and heard what all men said, 
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed, 
Being not unlovable but strange and light; 
Old riddles and new creeds, nor in despite 
But softly, as men smile about the dead. 


The sages have a hundred maps to give 

That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree, 
They rattle reason out through many a sieve 
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free: 
And all these things are less than dust to me 
Because my name is Lazarus and I live. 


69 


Oh Oh ek 
Pere naa. 
& 


uA i 





SONGS OF EDUCATION 





SONGS OF EDUCATION: 
I. History 
Form 991785, Sub-Section D 


E Roman threw us a road, a road, 
And sighed and strolled away: 
The Saxon gave us a raid, a raid, 
A raid that came to stay; 
The Dane went west, but the Dane confessed 
That he went a bit too far; 
And we all became, by another name, 
The Imperial race we are. 


Chorus 


The Imperial race, the inscrutable race, 
The invincible race we are. 


Though Sussex hills are bare, are bare, 
And Sussex weald is wide, 

From Chichester to Chester 

Men saw the Norman ride; 

He threw his sword in the air and sang 
To a sort of a light guitar; 

It was all the same, for we all became 
The identical nobs we are. 


73 


Chorus 


The identical nobs, individual nobs 
Unmistakable nobs we are. 


The people lived on the land, the land, 
They pottered about and prayed; 

They built a cathedral here and there 

Or went on a small crusade: 

Till the bones of Becket were bundled out 
For the fun of a fat White Czar, 

And we all became, in spoil and flame, 
The intelligent lot we are. 


Chorus 


The intelligent lot, the intuitive lot, 
The infallible lot we are. 


O Warwick woods are green, are green, 
But Warwick trees can fall: 

And Birmingham grew so big, so big, 

And Stratford stayed so small. 

Till the hooter howled to the morning lark 
That sang to the morning star; 

And we all became, in freedom’s name, 
The fortunate chaps we are. 


Chorus 


The fortunate chaps, felicitous chaps, 
The fairy-like chaps we are. 


The people they left the land, the land, 

But they went on working hard; 

And the village green that had got mislaid 
Turned up in the squire’s back-yard: 

But twenty men of us all got work 

On a bit of his motor car; 

And we all became, with the world’s acclaim, 
The marvellous mugs we are. 


Chorus 


The marvellous mugs, miraculous mugs, 
The mystical mugs we are. 


SONGS OF EDUCATION: 
II. GEOGRAPHY 
Form 17955301, Sub-Section Z 


Ges earth is a place on which England is 


found, 
And you find it however you twirl the 
globe round; 
For the spots are all red and the rest 1s all grey, 
And that is the meaning of Empire Day. 


Gibraltar’s a rock that you see very plain, 

And attached to its base is the district of Spain. 

And the island of Malta is marked further on, 

Where some natives were known as the Knights of 
St. John. 

Then Cyprus, and east to the Suez Canal, 

That was conquered by Dizzy and Rothschild his 
pal 

With the Sword of the Lord in the old English way; 

And that is the meaning of Empire Day. 


Our principal imports come far as Cape Horn; 
For necessities, cocoa; for luxuries, corn; 
Thus Brahmins are born for the rice-field, and thus, 


76 


The Gods made the Greeks to grow currants for us; 
Of earth’s other tributes are plenty to choose, 
Tobacco and petrol and Jazzing and Jews: 

The Jazzing will pass but the Jews they will stay; 
And that is the meaning of Empire Day. 


Our principal exports, all labelled and packed, 
At the ends of the earth are delivered intact: 
Our soap or our salmon can travel in tins 
Between the two poles and as like as two pins; 
So that Lancashire merchants whenever they like 
Can water the beer of a man in Klondike 

Or poison the meat of a man in Bombay; 

And that is the meaning of Empire Day. 


The day of St. George is a musty affair 

Which Russians and Greeks are permitted to share; 
The day of Trafalgar is Spanish in name : 
And the Spaniards refuse to pronounce it the same; 
But the Day of the Empire from Canada came 
With Morden and Borden and Beaverbrook’s fame 
And saintly seraphical souls such as they: 

And that is the meaning of Empire Day. 


17 


SONGS OF EDUCATION: 
Ill. For tar CricHE 


Form 8277059, Sub-Section K 


met, 
A thing I shall never entirely forget; 
And I toy with the fancy that, young as I am, 
I should know her again if we met in a tram. 
But mother is happy in turning a crank 
That increases the balance at somebody’s bank; 
And I feel satisfaction that mother is free 
From the sinister task of attending to me. 


| REMEMBER my mother, the day that we 


They have brightened our room, that is spacious 
and cool, 
With diagrams used in the Idiot School, 
And Books for the Blind that will teach us to see; 
But mother is happy, for mother is free. 
For mother is dancing up forty-eight floors, 
For love of the Leeds International Stores, 
And the flame of that faith might perhaps have 
grown cold, 
With the care of a baby of seven weeks old. 


78 


For mother is happy in greasing a wheel 
For somebody else, who is cornering Steel; 
And though our one meeting was not very long, 
She took the occasion to sing me this song: 
**O, hush thee, my baby, the time soon will come 
When thy sleep will be broken with hooting and 
hum; 
There are handles want turning and turning all 
day, 
And knobs to be pressed in the usual way; 


O, hush thee, my baby, take rest while I croon, 
For Progress comes early, and Freedom too soon.”’ 


719 


SONGS OF EDUCATION: 
IV. CuirizENsHIP 


Form 8889512, Sub-Section Q 


OW slowly learns the child at school 
H The names of all the nobs that rule 
From Ponsonby to Pennant; 
Ere his bewildered mind find rest, 


Knowing his host can be a Guest, 
His landlord is a Tennant. 


He knew not, at the age of three, 
What Lord St. Leger next will be 
Or what he was before; 

A Primrose in the social swim 

A Mr. Primrose is to him, 

And he is nothing more. 


But soon, about the age of ten, 

He finds he is a Citizen, 

And knows his way about; 

Can pause within, or just beyond, 

The line ’twixt Mond and Demi-Mond, 
*Twixt Getting On—or Out. 


80 


The Citizen will take his share 
(In every sense) as bull and bear; 
Nor need this oral ditty 

Invoke the philologic pen 

To show you that a Citizen 
Means Something in the City. 


Thus gains he, with the virile gown, 
The fasces and the civic crown, 
The forum of the free; 

Not more to Rome’s high law allied 
Is Devonport in all his pride 

Or Lipton’s self than he. 


For he will learn, if he will try, 
The deep interior truths whereby 
We rule the Commonwealth; 
What is the Food-Controller’s fee 
And whether the Health Ministry 
Are in it for their health. 


$1 


SONGS OF EDUCATION: 
V. Tor HichrerR MatHEemMatics 
Form 339125, Sub-Section M 
WICE one is two, 


Twice two is four, 
But twice two is ninety-six if you 
know the way to score. 
Half of two is one, 
Half of four is two, 
But half of four is forty per cent. if your name is 
Montagu: 
For everything else is on the square 
If done by the best quadratics; 
And nothing is low in High Finance 
Or the Higher Mathematics. 


A straight line is straight 
And a square mile is flat 
But you learn in trigonometrics a trick worth two 
of that. 
Two straight lines 
Can’t enclose a Space, 
But they can enclose a Corner to support the 
Chosen Race: 


82 


For you never know what Dynamics do 
With the lower truths of Statics; 

And half of two is a touring car 

In the Higher Mathematics. 


There is a place apart 
Beyond the solar ray, 
Where parallel straight lines can meet in an un- 
official way. 
There is a room that holds 
The examiner or his clerks, 
Where you can square the circle or the man that 
gives the marks. 
Where you hide in the cellar and then look down 
On the poets that live in the attics; 
For the whole of the house is upside down 
In the Higher Mathematics. 


83 


SONGS OF EDUCATION: 
VI. HyGiEne 


Form 394411102, Sub-Section X 


“All practical Eugenists are agreed on the im- 
portance of sleep.”’—The Eugenic Congress. 


HEN Science taught mankind to breathe 
VV A little while ago, 

Only a wise and thoughtful few 
Were really in the know: 
Nor could the Youth his features wreathe, 
Puffing from all the lungs beneath: 
When Duty whispered softly “‘Breathe!”’ 
The Youth would answer “Blow!” 


When Science proved with lucid care 

The need of Exercise, 

Our thoughtless Youth was climbing trees 
Or lightly blacking eyes: 

To reckless idlers breaking bounds 

For football or for hare-and-hounds, 

Or fighting hard for fourteen rounds, 

It came as a surprise. 


84 


But when she boldly counsels Sleep 
To persons when in bed, 

Then, then indeed men blush to see 
The daybreak blushing red: 

The early risers whom we term 
Healthy, grow sickly and infirm; 

The Early Bird who caught the Worm 
Will catch the Germ instead. 


For this at least be Science praised 

If all the rest be rot, 

That now she snubs the priggish child 
That quits too soon his cot: 

The pharisaic pachyderm 

Of spiritual pride shall squirm: 

The Early Bird catches the worm, 
The Worm that dieth not. 


be S a 
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‘ MIRA, 


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